Drawing Attention to Your Subject Using Radial Focus Blur

Drawing Attention to your Subject

There are many techniques you can use in Photoshop to Draw more attention to your subject. In this episode we cover a special technique we created to help blur the edges of a photo while keeping your subject in focus. Prepare to learn about drawing attention to your subject using radial focus blur!

Step and Repeat

In order to create this Special Effect you will have to learn how to Step-and-Repeat in Photoshop. The first step is to make a duplicate of your layer and hit OPTN+CMD+T and make your transformation. After the transformation is complete hit ENTER to apply the transformation. You have just completed the STEP part of the Step-and-Repeat.

To apply the REPEAT just hit SHIFT+OPTN+CMD+T. Each time you enter this command Photoshop will apply the same transformation and create a New Layer.

Radial Focus Blur

In this episode we use the Step-and-Repeat to Draw attention to the subject’s Face. We enter the STEP process by hitting OPTN+CMD+T and move the reference point over the subject’s Face. Then we make the image larger and rotate it clockwise. Depending on the degree of transformation in this step your image will either be more or less blurred.

We then use the REPEAT command by hitting SHIFT+OPTN+CMD+T anywhere from 5-10 times. After you have created your New Layers with the REPEAT command, select those layers, hit V, then use the numbers on the top of your keyboard to change their Opacity. Different Opacities will give you different looks.